Power That Was
by Fyrefly
Summary: “I was a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Was.” What happened between Cordy’s time as a Power and giving birth to Jasmine? How was Cordy really possessed? The Plans of Jasmine revealed. Oneshot.


Rating: PG

Spoilers: through S4

Summary: "I was a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Was." What happened between Cordy's time as a Power and giving birth to Jasmine? How was Cordy really possessed? The Plans of Jasmine revealed. Oneshot.

Author's Note: This is the first fanfiction I've written in….well, years, and the first time I've tried my hand at writing AtS or BtVS. I just finished watching all the episodes of Angel and I was enthralled by Cordelia's character development, as well as the acting done by Charisma Carpenter. Carpenter manages to move slowly and subtly from the bitchy!Cordy we know and love into the loving, generous-hearted woman of Season Three. On top of that, the moment she returns to this world/planet/dimension, there is something subtly off about her. Long before "the truth came out," before Skip spilled the beans and Cordy killed Lilah, I knew she just wasn't the same character. She plays it off subtly and well, but there's something so OFF about S4-Cordy, made even more amazing by her recognizably RIGHT performance during her sole S5 episode. Because of that acting skill, I never bought that Cordy was possessed before she came back from being a Superior Being.

So, play nice, read, and hopefully enjoy. 

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I am a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Is.

I am also unspeakably bored.

This place is full of blue and golden lights, and it's really quite pretty, but I think now that I was meant to be less of an observer and more of a participant. It's kind of weird, but I think I have the seeds of a warrior's heart within me. A warrior who likes Versace and Prada and dreams of nice shoes and an acting career, but a warrior nonetheless. I think I've already proved that as much as I may want that life in theory, I'm much more complete and fulfilled when I'm…well, out helping the helpless.

It doesn't hurt if the helpless are wealthy, of course, but I'm not picky.

That said, I have been up here for—a few days or an eternity, I can't really tell which other than by how time passes for those whom I'm watching. And for most of this time, I've been begging Angel to find a way to bring me back. I want to be in the thick of it again, not just up here radiating light and love. This is nice, but it's not what I'm meant to do. In spite of the fact that I'm made mostly of light and energy now, something in me is still human enough to need something to strive against, to fight, to make better. And I want to be human again.

But I'm not. I am a Power that Is.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I am a Being of Power and Light, and you don't expect much to be stronger than a Being of Power and Light. So yeah, it is kind of surprising when I feel all my particles and waves of rippling light are being drawn away from me. I can't really explain it. I feel the form I try to hold—an illusion of my human self—slowly dissipating. I feel like a drop of dye in clear water, a cloud falling apart in the sky, or dust motes in the air being pulled from a shaft of light into the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. I didn't know how to fight it—they don't really teach you these things in Power & Light School, since as far as I know it hasn't happened before.

I am, of course, completely conscious while the rippling aquas and golds of me are drawn to some unknown destination. For a second, I feel even stranger: as a Power, it's been a while since anything has been unknown to me. When I finally re-coalesce, I find myself surrounded by a soft light, nearly identical to my own. The only difference is that while I am made of the color of clear skies and oceans, this presence is like fresh limes and springtime leaves. I miss leaves, and limes in drinks. Her color makes me think of home.

"Cordy," she says gently as I pull my form together. She does the same, and before me is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She has skin the color of cream and her hair is as black as this piece of obsidian jewelry I had in high school, the silkiest and smoothest and thickest and darkest hair that I have ever seen. Her eyes are just slightly tilted, and as emerald as the light around her. Her nose is straight, her cheekbones slanted and Nordic. At first, I think, 'She is Eurasian,' and then I think she is not at all. I know exactly what she is. She is every trait I have ever admired in another woman, everything I wanted to be when I was a child. She somehow has created of herself everything that I find beautiful. She has tried to make herself the epitome of everything I hold dear.

She even smells like my grandmother's strawberry pies and homemade bread. I think, 'This can't be good.'

"Cordy," she says again, smiling gently. She turns her head to me on a neck that I think might be Audrey Hepburn's, slender as the stem of a wine glass, and extends one soft and perfect hand to me. She wants me to take it, to walk with her.

I just purse my lips and wait for her to talk. Hello, I've been up here for a while? I'm surrounded by all this emanating love. You are so not pulling me under with that trick.

"Can I help you?" I snark at her. In spite of my awareness of the feelings of joy that the Powers all radiate, I can't help but feel like I should love this woman. At the same time, perhaps because of my knowledge as a Power, I know there is something wrong here. The sweet green light around us doesn't just illuminate, it swallows things. It tinges everything with its color. It doesn't just give—it possesses as well.

She smiles. She understands. I think her smile is my Aunt Brianna's, the youngest of my aunts who died before she hit thirty from a painful cancer that spread throughout all her bones and upper respiratory organs. She smiled like that even when the cancer was at its worst. I remember because when I was six I visited her in the hospital and it scared me to see her so shrunken and sad and bald. Even though it hurt her to move, she let me sit on her bed and she told me stories for as long as she could stay awake. When I cried at the blueness in her clawed and stick-like fingers, she kissed my tears and told me, "In the end, everything will be okay. If it isn't okay, it isn't the end."

I am glad I am a Power, because if I wasn't aware of these things, I think I would have fallen to my knees when this strange woman smiled at me, and wept like I was that six year old again. I think I would have worshipped her for giving me another chance to love my aunt again, even if only subconsciously.

"I am here to make you an offer, Cordelia," the woman says gently. Her voice is familiar and full of compassion. "I know how much you want to go home."

I blink and stare at her. "Excuse me?"

"You wanted to be surrounded by the people you love, by the people who love you."

This is making me uncomfortable. She's right, but I still feel all wrong. "There's plenty of love up here." I want to tell her that I want Angel to come for me, not some green woman who wears parts of people I love and admire.

"Yes, but it's not the same, is it?" She smiles again, indulgently this time. Wierdly, I think of Xander in his sweeter moments. While there's nothing at all masculine about this woman, who is tall and fine-boned and elegant, my heart picks up the tremor of a high-school girl faced with roses by her secret crush, and though I am not sexually attracted to her, I feel the risk of falling in love.

"It's not the same at all," she continues. "The love up here is the fabric of all loves, and so vital to the very existence of love as we know it on earth—but because of that, it's also impersonal. You miss the personal bonds you had with your friends, don't you? And you miss being part of the fray." She smiles again and tries to take my hand. I inch backward. "Somehow, you still love them, even Angel—especially Angel—in spite of knowing all he's done."

That surprises me. She knows I've spent my boredom exploring the past. The Powers have filled me with all aspects of Angel's—and Angelus'—history. I immediately jump to his defense. "That's not Angel," I tell her sharply. "It's what he fights against, something he's forced to carry around with him. It's not a reason to not love him—in fact, it's part of _why_ I love him."

She looks surprised, but then says quickly, "Of course. And don't you want to be with him again?"

I stare at her, unblinking, cold. It's the look I usually reserve for one of my boys—Angel, Wesley, Gunn—when they do something stupid.

"I don't love it up here," I tell her at last, my voice chill. "But it's what I was told I needed to do. To help the world. And while I don't see exactly _how_ I'm helping the world, I think I'll keep doing it for now."

Her eyelids flicker. The lashes are sooty and thick, lashes I'd desperately tried to grow at one time. "This could be your last chance to get home," she protests. I don't think this woman was made to look desperate, but she can't help the look that creeps over her face.

I try not to hesitate, but it's hard. Another thing my aunt told me: "Maybe it's not meant to be. Or maybe it's meant _not_ to be."

"I want to go home," I tell her. "But if this is the only chance I get, I'm going to have to pass on it." I don't tell her what I'm thinking: that faced with the choice, it seems like going home now is represented only by selfish thoughts of what I want. For a minute, I recognize a little bit of Buffy in myself, and while we were never friends it makes me a little happy: we both may complain about our situations, but when it comes down to the wire, we do what we have to do. This is what I was called for, as much as I might not like it. This was the job the Powers charged me to do in order to benefit the world.

The woman blinks, and I wonder for a moment about her surprise. "You don't understand," she amends.

I raise an eyebrow.

"The Powers brought you up here _so that_ they could send you back."

Yeah, that was convincing.

"You've been chosen for a special mission _because_ you love Angel. That's why they filled you with images of Angelus."

For a second, I'm uncertain. A minute ago, she had seemed like she was expecting me to hate Angel and was disappointed when I'd leapt to his defense. Now she sounds as passionate as I was about my love for him.

She presses her advantage. "Angel is going to revert to Angelus soon. He will lose his soul."

I gape at her. "How—"

She wipes away the question with both hands. "How doesn't matter. What matters is that he will lose it and then he will regain it, and he will be in agony for what he has done. You need to be there to foil him, to make sure he causes as little damage as possible—that's why the Powers let you experience so much of his past. So you can know how he thinks. So you can stop him faster, and help him get back on his feet afterward. So you can save him."

I stare at her, horrified. My heart is breaking for him already. "What will he do?" I breathe at last, hearing the horror and agony in my own voice.

She eyes me knowingly. "'The Father will kill the Son,'" she intones.

My eyes widen. I feel shock ripple through me, and for a minute, my fingers and toes dissolve into light while I grapple with this. I think of Connor, his anger, his pain, his bright blue eyes gentle, his smile. I see him not as a threat from Quor'toth or a bringer of peace or even my would-be murder. All I can see are the eyes of a beautiful, heartbroken boy.

"No," I deny vehemently. "No! That prophecy was false—"

"Was it?" the woman asks sadly. She tries to take my hand again, and this time I let her. "Connor is vital to the survival of this world, Cordy. He will bring about world peace. You were put on a path to help protect both him and Angel. I will tell you now: it was I who moved you into the path of Angel four years ago. I was looking for people who could protect Connor, when he came, and I found you. Cordy, I was moving ten girls a day trying to set new destinies into motion, just so someone could save him. You were one of the few who stuck to that new destiny. And of those few, I will tell you, no matter what strings I can pull—" she paused, smiled "—I can't make people fall in love. Doyle's passing his visions on to you was just what I needed, but it came from pure luck and pure love."

For a minute I recoil—was it _luck_ that had killed Doyle?—and I find myself unshakably certain that even though she might not have made him love me, she had put him in a position to die in the hopes that the visions would move on to me. I think this all very quickly, and then it is gone, because she is talking to me and her fingers are stroking my hand like she loves me.

"You received the gift of the visions, and I knew then that you were the right one—what numbers of people you would save, your generosity, your kindness. In many ways, your altruism, as we discovered when we tested you with the offer of an alternate life. So we put the spark of divinity in you—"

"Divinity?" I've found my voice. "I thought it was demon—"

Again, she brushes my words with both hands, like cobwebs in the face. "They are the same, you know—at least on the level which we put in you. Fundamentally, all of this kind of energy comes from the Powers, divine and demon alike. In the Beginning—well, you don't need to hear that story now. Just know that what we put in you was in its most basic form and could go either way. In you, it was divine. This is why you shone, and why you floated. You were on your way to becoming an angel." She smiled again, and I felt joy tingle along my skin. "It was a sweet irony that you were working with Angel in an agency called Angel Investigations."

I gulped. I'd never thought of my transformation as angelic, but in a way, I suppose it did bring to mind all the pictures of heavenly harbingers.

"Then we brought you up here, my sweet girl. So we could fill you with the knowledge of Angelus. So you could go back and use your abilities—your visions, your newfound knowledge, and most importantly, your love—to stop Angelus and heal him, and to mend the rift between father and son. To save them all."

I shudder. If this is all true—and I can't think because my head is ringing with fear, fear for all of them: Angel, my love, and the precious, _precious_ child that is Connor, and for the others as well: Fred, Gunn, even Wesley would be in danger—if this is all true, then she is right. I don't have a choice. I have to go back. For a moment I wish I could ask someone for advice, for input, but in spite of all the love up here, there isn't a lot of interaction. In fact, this woman is the first Powers I have seen up close since I got here, and I don't recognize where we are or see anyone else around. My heart pulses. Time is short on earth—I forgot that sometimes. I don't even know how long has passed since I came to this place and me this woman.

"Okay," I say in a rush. "Okay." She turns toward me, beatific smile in place, and takes both my hands. The green light pulses and begins to glow in my palms. "Wait," I say, stopping for breath. "What are you doing?"

"I am the only one who can send you back to earth," the woman tells me, her eyes full of compassion and gentle sympathy. "I am the only one of the Powers who has left this realm before, and I am willing to sacrifice myself to make sure you can return."

My throat catches. "Sacrifice?"

She smiles again, and again, it reminds me of my beautiful aunt on her deathbed. "You can't make the transition without me. I will dissolve and give you my energy, and with that sacrificial act, send you back to earth. You may be disoriented at first, but you will be fine, and then you will save the world. You will save the _world,_ my sweet girl! I am not only willing, but _honored_ to die for such a cause."

She's going to die. Dying for a Being of Power and Light—that means forever. There's no coming back from that, no going to an alternate dimension. You just die. If she's going to die, I figure, then what she's said about Angel and Angelus and Connor must be true. There's no way she'd sacrifice herself otherwise, right?

"Okay," I say again. "How will this happen?"

She smiles, and she starts to glow. The light is like green bottle glass. "You do nothing. I will dissolve into you and you will possess my light and power. Basically, you will eat me." She looks like she thinks she's said something funny, but all I can think is ew.

I feel a tingle in my palms and then, where her fingers rest in the cups of my upturned hands, my own skin starts to glow a little. I can feel warmth rushing into me, and light.

"Who are you?" I ask as the world grows fuzzy and narrow. I concentrate on her mouth. In the swallowing light, I think I see tentacles, but I'm too sleepy to think straight. The tingle in my palms creeps up my arms and into my chest and stomach, but it doesn't feel like a tingle anymore—it feels like tiny crawling things. I try not to think of maggots, or the smell of rotting flesh.

She smiles again. My Aunt Brianna. "I was a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Was."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I was a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Was.

At least this is what I am told. I don't remember things. I know there is a good looking man named Angel who apparently is a vampire, and I used to work with him and receive visions from the Powers that Be. Then somehow I got sucked up into—heaven, or something—and now I'm back, and no-one knows why. That's the story, anyway. I don't know how much of it is right or true.

But I think I was in love with the man. Sometimes when I look at him I get this rush of tenderness and sadness, and an urge to make his world right, even though people—the others I am supposed to know, a girl named Fred and a boy named Gunn and a demon they tell me is Lorne—even though they all tell me it's dangerous for him to be too happy. Something about becoming evil again.

And then there is this boy, Connor, who is beautiful and sad, and infinitely vulnerable in spite of the fact that he can kill probably just about anything. According to pictures, I used to be like a mother to him, but neither he nor I remember such a time. All I know is that he takes care of me even though I'm useless now, and I wish I could return the favor.

At the same time, I feel threatened by all of them but Connor. Lorne heard me sing once and I think he learned something I didn't want him to know. In any case, I don't like him. You shouldn't go snooping in people's brains. This Fred girl, and Wesley—they worry me too. They're too smart. And Gunn and Angel, too strong, too concerned. I think if I forgot everything then there is a reason for that, something I don't want to remember or something I covered up, and if that's the case, I don't want them to know what it is. I feel like I have to be secretive around them, like if I say the wrong thing, _they'll know_—but I don't know what it is that I don't want them to know.

Maybe I'm not a good person. That scares me too.

But Connor….in spite of all he's seen, he's innocent. He tries to assure me that I am a good person, and strong. He wraps me in safety and he's…well, he's not overly analytical, like Wesley and Fred, so I don't think he'll figure out whatever it is that I don't want to figure out. And I think he loves me, in some way or another. He protects me and takes care of me, so I think even though he's strong, he won't hurt me. He'll use his strength to keep me safe, even if the other decide not to.

And they might.

I can't help feeling like I am all wrong here, and that even though I love them, I should be desperately afraid of them at the same time. Which is weird when you consider that I am a Power that Was. I mean, what does a Superior Being have to fear?

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I was a Being of Power and Light. I am a Power that Was.

And I remember everything now.

They did a spell to restore my memory, and it all came back. All of these earthly high school days, the endless cases at Angel Investigations, the interminable auditions for acting roles. Doyle's kiss, the meeting with Angel on the shore, Aunt Brianna, the eternity spent as a Power.

Both eternities spent as a Power.

I remember the energy blending, blue, gold, green. I remember becoming part of her, or her becoming part of me, inextricably entwined. I remember the beast in the bowels of the Earth, waiting to be summoned. I remember Revelations and the Whore of Babylon. I have already discovered that from this point, the only words out of my mouth will be lies. And after a minor battle, I will have her pressed down lovingly deep inside, sleeping, pleasant enough for a creature unconscious. It is sad, but when I leave her body, my energy will strip away from hers, and there will be nothing left. In some ways, I am both apologetic and honored that it had to be here, but you know the only way I could be reborn on this planet was through a woman who, like me, had once been a Power and had decided to return to the mortal coil.

Nevertheless, for now, I know I look conflicted. I try to flee the hotel as she crawls her way to the surface, trying to confess, trying to tell on me, trying to warn them.

"Cordy!"

I turn toward the voice, in spite of myself. I try to gulp back the truth. "I can't. Angel, I—" And then pieces of her spill out. "I'm sorry." I try to choke back those words.

"You remember," he says, his eyes worried and anxious. I can feel her aching for love of him. I want to get away—need to get away so I can put her down before she tells him everything.

"I remember all of it," she says, no matter how I try to twist and close my lips. "All of it." I wrestle with her, hold her down, and tell him, "I have to be alone. Please? For a while. It's too—" For a second, I have her under control. I spin on my heel and try to leave before she makes things worse. I am smothering her in light, and in love, and I know this fight will actually take less than I thought. I will have her under control and asleep for good by the time I get back to the warehouse and have to greet Connor, my sweet boy.

"Cordelia."

Haltingly, I turn, thinking I can control her just enough. I know, instinctively, what he will see when he looks at me after I am reborn: a tall woman like the one he loved as Liam, the one he tried to substitute with prostitutes when she couldn't love him back. I will have skin and hair like Kendra, a slayer killed by his own childe, and lips like Faith's. The color of my eyes and the tone of my muscle and the scent of my skin and hair will all belong to Buffy, and my smile will always be Cordelia's, and other things he will see in me will belong to Dru and to Darla and to a hundred other beautiful women he killed. My laugh will belong to his sister.

"Were we….in love?"

Desperately sad and tender, she claws her way to the surface one last time, trying to reassure him and love him and warn him all at once.

"We were," she says.

Then I push her down one last time, and she is done.

I was a Being of Power and Light.

I am a Power that Was.


End file.
